Though there are speculations galore, as well as some indirect confirmations, that computing giant Hewlett-Packard (HP) is set to mark its foray into the tablet arena, with an announcement to the effect at a February 9 event, what remains to be seen is how the HP tablet will fare against the popular Apple iPad and the horde of Android tablets to appear on the scene in the coming months!

While there seems little doubt that HP will deliver a compelling product, clearly involving the WebOS platform for which the company acquired Palm last year, it is still not certain whether a cool tablet based on yet another platform will effectively take on the competition in the market.

Despite the fact that Palm's development of the WebOS for handsets received rave reviews from the design standpoint, HP will have to coax the developers that there will be enough customers for them to create apps for the WebOS tablet(s) as well as any other mobile devices that the company may announce.

Meanwhile, even though Apple already enjoys the early advantage in the tablet market and the ubiquitous Android may be tough to beat, HP's marketing influence and brand awareness could help the company can put up a fight provided that - it can release the tablet almost immediately after the February announcement; the tablet is priced right; and HP can get an app store up with a respectable number of popular programs.